The Mass Media’s Mass Hysteria Over Google
Mainstream journalists are terrified that Google News will steal their power, but Steve Boriss argues that there are more serious threats to the media than a site that "is nothing more than a dumb, machine-driven aggregator of news from other sites."
No group has done more whining about the threat posed by Google than journalists — but this mass hysteria by the mass media is hard to understand. After all, what do search engines have to do with news, and how could Google possibly use technology to take it over? What, exactly, is the press afraid of?
We have already seen three phases of “Press-teria” about Google. Phase I was triggered three years ago by a journalist-produced video called “EPIC 2014” with a plot line worthy of a Grade B monster movie. It tried to make us rue that day in the future when we might dismiss the talents of journalists and allow all-powerful search engine technology to learn everything about us, then assemble unreliable flotsam and jetsam from the web into stories that pander to our prejudices. Unless you believe that good writing requires no human judgment or, for that matter, that humans have no human judgment, this scare tactic falls flat.
In Phase II, online newspapers accused Google News of stealing their work simply by using their words in brief synopses that accompanied links to their online news sites. Belgian newspapers sued Google for copyright infringement, so Google stopped referencing their stories, leading to an estimated 25 percent plunge in the online papers’ traffic. The newspapers relented. In America, the whining did not stop until newspapers allowed their jointly-owned Associated Press to accept a negligible fee in exchange for these synopses. But at the same time, Google News dropped links to similar articles from the AP members’ online papers. There is no word on whether or not they experienced the same plunge in traffic as the Belgian online papers.
Last week we seem to have entered Phase III, when news outlets will simply rage against the machine. News Corp’s Anne Spackman said Google was “hugely dangerous,” particularly because even small changes Google makes to their search algorithms can significantly alter news outlets’ search rankings.
The fact that these three phases of complaints have nothing in common should make us suspect that the press has an underlying problem that has nothing to do with Google at all. In fact, Google has never shown any real seriousness about being a player in news. Their Google News site is nothing more than a dumb, machine-driven aggregator of news from other sites, and mostly features the same AP, center-left, one-size-fits-all news stories that consumers increasingly are rejecting. And, unlike the #1 news site, Yahoo! News, it makes almost no use of human editors.
The real problem is that the press is deathly afraid they might lose their power to control the national conversation — and they are mortified they might lose it to private sector firms like Google that place top priority on profit and are indifferent to modern journalism dogma. While newspapers have always been part of the profit-driven private sector, they stopped identifying with it decades ago. When modern journalism was founded by Walter Lippmann, he declared that henceforth journalists would be viewed as scientists who generated objective truths, with a duty to jealously guard these truths from contamination by anyone who is not a journalist. Journalists today take this to mean they have a duty to fight-off any business pressures from their employers, financial markets, and would be corporate competitors. Their argument is represented today in a misleadingly-named “media reform” movement, for which PBS’ Bill Moyers serves as its Jesse Jackson. He tours the country giving fiery speeches about media conglomerates swallowing-up smaller outlets, warning us that “Big Media is ravenous. It never gets enough, always wants more. And it will stop at nothing to get it. These conglomerates are an empire, and they are imperial.” He rails against “a thoroughly commercialized environment, a media plantation…dominated by…corporate and ideological forces,” mentioning Google by name.
In Moyers’ America, government is the hero, with government-controlled PBS and NPR among the very few “independent sources of information” that have survived. He calls upon the FCC to impose even greater regulations on corporate activities and free speech. But Moyers’ America could not be more different from Thomas Jefferson’s America, in which government, not business, was seen as the villainous empire that always wanted more, requiring a Press that served as a “fence” to protect the public from encroachment on their individual rights.
What modern journalism does not yet understand is that the news media, like the government, derives its power from the people. Until they pay more attention to what their audiences want, they will continue to create opportunities for other private sector firms to snatch away their audiences, their revenues, and their power. As the Internet ushers in a new, people-driven news age, the biggest threat to the power of the media is not Google. It is us.
Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He is employed by Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.” He holds an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan.
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9 Comments
1. ThirstyJon:Excellent!
I find it exciting that the major news sources are afraid that if I have a choice I might just not listen to them.
Go Google!
Excellent Post.
ThirstyJon
Nov 16, 2007 - 6:03 am 2. John Moore:freedomthirst.com
While your analysis of the press is correct, watch out for Google.
Its motives are not purely profit. The corporate motto is “Do no evil” which, given the far left views of their founders, means “support the left.”
And they do that. They have rejected ads attacking MoveOn.org. Their news aggregator site has an large collection of tiny left wing news sources that it seems to pull from. A search on a hot topic often brings up a “you never heard of it” lefty web site as the first link, with MSM and other more popular sites farther down, and conservative sites… well, I’ve never seen one there.
Google IS dangerous. It has almost monopoly power in controlling the information people find on the internet, and vast amounts of money. The free market created Google, but at the moment, Google’s world is far from free. Thus it is not just dangerous to the tired old news elite, but also to anyone seeking information.
Furthermore, News Corp is hardly representative of the MSM. It is more profit motivated, as Rupert Murdoch does not adhere to the media model of Bill Moyers or the rest of the MSM. So if Google is dangerous to News Corp, it’s not because it is threatening the elite MSM’s control of the dialog.
Nov 16, 2007 - 1:00 pm 3. Steve Boriss:John Moore, My personal concern about Google is their support for Net Neutrality, a seemingly benign piece of legislation that would set a precedent for federal government regulation of the Internet. Similar regulation in broadcast led to decades of chilled free speech. The Internet will only fulfill its promise for unprecedented free speech if it remains in private hands.
Nov 16, 2007 - 1:21 pm 4. Naughten:HYSTERICAL MASS-MEDIA IS LOSING THE POWER STRUGGLE WITH GOOGLE – DEMOCRACTIC CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM OF SPEECH TERRIFIES THEM
Nov 16, 2007 - 2:02 pm 5. John Moore:Steve Boriss:
I don’t quite what to think about net neutrality legislation. It has long been the ethic of the internet (inherited from its non-commercial roots) that a all connections should be equal (in terms of who you can connect to, etc). That is the normal meaning of net neutrality. I haven’t looked at the details actual NN proposals, but what I have read creates more fairness for users and upcoming vendors. Basically, it limits provision of internet connectivity to just that, rather than allowing connectivity providers to alter the user’s experience based on deals they make with content providers.
There is no way to keep the internet from being regulated by government. It is too important – they will get their mitts on it one way or the other. Net neutrality (and Google’s initiative for open access to 700MHz cellular connectivity) both seem to be good ideas (although the cellular connectivity world is already strongly regulated by the feds via the FCC).
I guess, to me, it’s okay to regulate net neutrality in monopoly situations where federalism is not damaged. It may be okay to regulate it as a matter of creating a good standard (which is a power the feds have long used, usually to the good).
Nov 16, 2007 - 5:35 pm 6. John Proffitt:While this may seem like a minor point in your article, I do think it bears correction. NPR, PBS and other “public media” outlets of that type are not “government-controlled” as you stated in your piece.
While the CPB does indeed receive cash from federal appropriations, it’s a measly sum (a little over $400 million per year) and there are no content or editorial controls that flow with that money.
Nov 17, 2007 - 1:32 am 7. Steve Boriss:John Proffitt, Actually, I do not accept traditional definitions of “government-controlled.” Any entities that are controlled by political appointees and rely on taxpayer funding, and therefore must respond to pressure from politicians, in my view are government-controlled rather than fully market-driven. To a large extent, I would say that even the TV networks are government-controlled as their need to get their broadcast licenses renewed has clearly led them to watered-down coverage of government as compared to what Jefferson would have liked. Compare the political discussion of regulated broadcast vs. relatively unregulated cable and there is a clear difference. And obviously, radio was government-controlled during the era of the Fairness Doctrine. Its lapse led to much freer speech and the explosion of talk radio.
Nov 17, 2007 - 6:31 am 8. Tim MacPherson:Good for Google. the hell with the mainstream media. They’re up in a tizzy because search engines like google greatly reduce their monopoly on ideas.
Pretty much any time FOX and/or Newscorp is against something, i’m for it.
Nov 21, 2007 - 11:58 am 9. bee:I hope the hi-tech moguls wake-up and see that the old elite are not their friends. They are bitter enemies and the worst is to come if they do not act immediately and stop placating fools seeking to impose grandiose socialist agendas upon humanity. You cannot placate fanatics.
The elite are terrified that they are quickly becoming irrelevant through the technologies being created by the hi-tech sector. The old money is quickly becoming old and small relative to the great wealth being created by the hi-tech. They are losing their positions of power and and are now attacking innovation as the enemy of the people (really their power over the people). What they really mean is they are no becoming just “old” money without a privileged voice.
Journalists are seeing the institutions that empowered them decline as the internet creates true information access to the masses. Gone are the days that the news papers, radio and TV controled what we are allowed to hear. We are all now able to access the information we need without seeking out the “learned” journalists and their cabal of “experts’ bought to tell the story in a “simple” way for all of us “dumb” Americans to understand. Yes they are scared. They should be. They no longer can feed at the trough.
Google and the rest of the hi-tech sector need to wake up and see they must stand for true human liberty not just the quick buck. That means that Google, yahoo and MSN must respect human rights. Selling Chinese dissidents for a buck is simply short term whoring. Another role that Google, Yahoo, and MSN must resist is playing the PC police. This will also destroy ability to appeal to the public.
Nov 22, 2007 - 9:14 am